Two life paths collide, one on the way to damnation, the other escaping from it. Young Arvin grows up in the 1950s in the rundown no man's land of the Midwest. Here, the American Dream has turned into a feverish nightmare, populated by psychopathic criminals, corrupt sheriffs, and religious fanatics. Arvin struggles to find a way out of this world. But when his girlfriend is abused by the local preacher and subsequently hangs herself, he takes the law into his own hands. At the same time, just a few miles away, the two serial killers Carl and Sandy set out on a hunt. They lure unsuspecting hitchhikers into their car to brutally kill them there. Somewhere deep in the backcountry, in that invisible borderland between civilization and archaic cruelty, their paths cross.